84lH ACSA ANNUAL MEETING OPEN SESSIONS 1996 483

Casablanca the Sublime: Real Spaces of a Virtual City

JORGE OTERO-PAILOS Universidad Politecnica de Puerto Rico

In a recent ploy to boost its tourist industry, the Kingdom of filled its tourist agencies around the world with posters of its buildings and landscapes. The photographs framed with an inscription that reads: "Morocco: A Feast For The Senses." The country projects itself outwards into the world as a pleasure paradise capable of stimulating the entire complex of the human sensorium. The feast is a touristic orgy of consumption which, triggered by our contact with the seductive representations of these carehlly selected "ex- otic" Moroccan spaces, spins into an endless and delirious chase to experience those imaginary locations - to live the authentic Morocco as it is constructed in the posters. The tourist will never be able to fidly satisfy his or her urge to experience this "real" Morocco, because it doesn't exist. Instead he or she will be left pursuing this infinitely receding image of reality, consuming anything vaguely "Moroccan" along the way, and thereupon feeling the empty mouth, left void by the unacceptable loss of the desired object. But, why such a drive? Given that advertising undeniably works on the basis of deception, it is difficult to understand why consumers continue to have faith in it. The situation is problematized once we discover that the imaginary notion of Morocco is actually experienced by the world as a reality more real than the real; Therefore, to pursue the advertise- ment is actually a more genuine Moroccan experience than Morocco itself. The culprit ofthis phenomenon is : a city inside Morocco yet encompassing all that is Moroccan, a city outside of itself, yet continuously folding back into its assigned location on the world map: the greatest of imagi- nary cities. You can find Casablanca in: Miami's South Beach, , Philadelphia, Manhattan, , or . You can smoke Casablanca, or you can eat it for lunch' -all without ever setting foot on Moroccan ground. The city's international influence is almost entirely in- debted to the imaginary Casablanca moving through the scenes of the 1942 MGM studios film which bears its name. Although the film was shot entirely at Warner's Burbank studios, and the street scenes were constructed out of re- vamped props from Warner's 1942 version of The Desert Figure 1. Packaging for Casablanca rolling tobacco by Alois Song, its images of Casablanca have acquired a presence Poschl GmbH & Co., Landshut, Germany. 484 841H ACSA ANNUAL MEETING OPEN SESSIONS 1996

CARTOON FEATURE PACKS, READER-INTEREST PUNCH

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- F Figure 2. 1942 poster advertisement for Warner Brother's film Figure 3.1942Newspaper feature relating the imaginary Casablanca Casablanca. The line between the imagnary and the real is blurred. to the real city. which supersedes that of the actual city. The motion picture, Moroccan ground, Casablanca had already embodied a directed by and starring presence and spatiality in their minds; an image that was and was released in New York on Thanks- quite different from what they would find there. Lyautey, giving Day 1942, just eighteen days after the Allies landed resident general of the French Protectorate, and Prost, head in Casablanca with the intention of taking advantage of the architect and urbanist of the colonial government, carried out timely event. As a publicity campaign, Warner Brothers a building campaign that was only superficially concerned circulated posters and news paper columns around the with the real Casablanca. Rather, it followed a projective country that intended to blur the line between the imaginary methodology through which the French conception of what and the real. In a strange retroactive gesture, the movie took the city should have been was built in a sort of retro fit over the actual city with the Allied Army's use of the name construction. Under the directives of Lyautey, Prost endeav- "Rick's Place" as a pseudonym for Casablanca. Ever since ored to create an alternate Casablanca more in tune with the two cities have coupled in the collective imaginary of the European expectations and thus more attractive to both West. corporate businesses and tourism. The city was forever A similar conflation between the imaginary and the real altered, thrown into a new reality which negated traditional had already occurred in Casablanca when the French arrived. structural, decorative, and spatial paradigms through a com- Casablanca was conceived by the French far prior to their plex mechanism of simulation and replacement of tradi- encounter with the actual medina. In the mind of the French, tional structures and motifs. the city had taken shape through the orientalist literature and The political benefits that the French government reaped painting of the late nineteenth century, through travel post- from its projective urban methodology becomes clear if we ers, prints of Andalusian palace complexes, early photo- analyze the cultural processes set into motion by Prost with graphs of the monumental structures of the East, early films what he would call his architecture en sut$ace (in search of like Valentino's The Sheik, and in brief, through an interdis- an expedient way of creating the "appearance" of a city with ciplinary European artistic endeavor which, before the large little funds, Prost built the facades of his institutional struc- scale impact of tourism, imagined the East and its mysteries tures first and subsequently "filled in" the building). The as a homogeneous phenomenon spanning roughly between advent of colonialism resulted in the forced encounter of two India and the Mahgreb. Before the Europeans set foot on radically different aesthetic and representational traditions. 84lH ACSA ANNUAL MEETING OPEN SESSIONS 1996 485

meaning, but extends to incorporate epistemologies of the body as guiding principles of harmony and beauty, tumbled in the face ofthe Other. I am not suggesting that this occurred immediately, in fact, the work that Prost executed was very much in line with humanist thought: his beaux arts spatiality and traditional treatment of structural and decorative motifs are clear signs of his endeavor to encode his oeuvre with the social values and rules of the French elite. What I am suggesting, however, is that, as a result of colonial contact, bi-lateral gaps in cultural signification appeared, and that the incapacity of traditional theories about subject'object rela- tions to account for those gaps proved their inadequacy: subjectivities were being formed through new channels. Within this context, the subject which in humanism had been regarded as the determinant of meaning, was now not only incapable ofproducing that meaning, but actually threatened with disjunction and paralyzed with the fear of the Other. What is evident from the hiatus caused by colonization, is that subjectivity does not exist prior to and independent of the world that surrounds us, but that it is affected, shaped, and made available through social transactions. It is through the relationships ofproduction, reception, and consumption that we have with the objects surrounding us that our subjectivity is formed. When the British punk rockers of The Clash sang: I'm all lost in the supermarket I can no longer shop happily I came in here for the special offer A guaranteed personality they were alluding to the disorienting fact that, under the Figure 4. The Fighting French march outside of New York's auspices of modernity and capitalism, we have access to Hollywood Theater to celebrate Casablanca's premiere, 1942. subjectivities, and develop identities, through exchanges in consumer culture. As Kazys Varnelis explains: Embedded in each were autochthonous, culturally deter- there are so many choices available to us that we are mined ways of relating to the objects they produced and ... made to feel free and productive by exercising choice consumed. With colonial occupation however, these modes among them. While we cannot be Peppers and mem- of perception clashed, uprooting the structure of relation- bers of the Pepsi generation at the same time but ships between subjects and their surrounding object world. neither of these contradicts our eating of a Three New kinds of objects and social transactions were intro- duced, and a cross-fertilization occurred that permeated all Musketeers candy bar. We form meaning for our- selves out of the combination of these different codes. aspects of every day life. This condition made subjects call Yet these processes of filling in are not ones of into question the boundaries of the ideological space they production but rather of consumption, not free, but inhabited, and fomented the emergence of new contentions rather confined to restricted, banalized channel^.^ and attitudes towards the physical appearance of these objects, their production, and their consumption.' Clearly, the categories of production and reception have The cultural clash brought about by the colonial enter- been reversed by capitalist commodity exchange, and the prise fractured the unity of cultural identities and their position of the creative subject, that the humanists would correlate channels of sigmfication, resulting in a sense of have, has been erased. Subjectivity and identity are dis- dismemberment that permeated individual consciousness. placed into the realm of culture, of architecture, dissemi- Thus, an analysis of the artistic forms that resulted from this nated in the object world surrounding us.We have access disjunctive encounter (i.e. Prost's architecture) based on to subjectivities through receptive exchanges with those traditional modes of conceptualizing subject'object rela- objects. In the case of Casablanca, these objects (the tions is obsolete. We cannot look at the results of an fragments of Casablanca) are disseminated across the world operation with the tools that the very operation eradicated. haphazardly. We encounter them inadvertently as we surf The humanist tradition, which, in architecture, not only the "net" of reality, and our exchanges with them reference valorizes the subject as the sole originating agent of form and us back to a city somewhere between North and our 486 84THACSA ANNUAL MEETING OPEN SESSIONS 1996 imaginary, to a set of feelings end emotions, to the experi- schemes of the French state, confusing the ability to exercise ence of a Genius Loci that has no finite "locus." In short, the compositional virtuosity with "designing" architecture. experience of Casablanca is perhaps the only "real" experi- Ifwe continue to trace back the city's memory we find that ence of the virtual city -all this without the introduction of the French and the North Americans were not the first to the computer. And, in that sense, Casablanca cannot be appropriate and transform Casablanca to render their a-priori understood as a beautiful city in the traditional "touristic" conceptions of the city real and physical. The entire history sense, but sublime: it is a city in which one yearns for a and growth of the city known as Casablanca, is contingent presence that can never be fulfilled. upon the various repetitive instances where the real was This is not to say that individuals are relegated to a purely retro-fitted to incorporate the imaginary. As early as the receptive position and that objects solely occupy the cat- beginning of the sixteenth century the Portuguese cosmog- egory of subjective production. As we know, objects have rapher Duarte Pacheco would note that the city was easily to be made by somebody, and that person should have some recognizable "by a great tower that's found in it." Hence- manipulative agency over the object. However, with the forth, the Portuguese sailors, forgetting the city's real name advent of industrialization labor becomes inevitably alien- was , began referring to it as "Casa Branca." The ated through mass production and the logic of means and Portuguese nomenclature was followed suspiciously, and returns, and the individual worker finds little, if any, identi- chronologically, by the Moroccan appellation Ddr-el-Beida fication with the object produced. Commodities are social (meaning "white house" or "Casablanca"). Historians how- objects that are available for consumption and identification, ever are not positive that the Moorish name was a literal but that strangely cannot be traced to an individual. Thus, translation of the Portuguese. After all, as the Moroccan identification occurs with the actual object, and not with legend goes, the patron saint of the city, Sidi 'Allil El- other subjects. Subjects assemble in collectives around these Kairoulni, settled in Anfa towards the end of the seventeenth social objects: in relation to commodities (thus we have the century, accompanied by his wife Ldlla El-Beid'a (the white "jet-set," the "net-set," and other such object oriented iden- lady). The legend claims that the peasants who would come tities). This has perhaps always been the case in architecture. to buy goods form them would say "let's go to the house of A building is not produced by a single individual; it is, as the white one (Ddr-el-Beida)," and that subsequently, the other commodities, a social object with which one finds city that was built around that site carried her name. The direct identification, and around which collectives assemble. existence of a Moroccan myth pertaining to the name's This is clear if we think of reproducible structures like those origin might suggest that the two appellations were born of McDonald's or Mobil. These buildings are infinitely somehow simultaneously, and not out of each other. What- exchangeable, we see them again and again disseminated ever the actual circumstance, by 185 1 all of the maps and across thousands of locations. When we enter one of those nautical charts of the area had replaced the old Anfa, with buildings, we are in fact buying it, or buying into the identity Casablanca.' it makes available. When we go to a road-side McDonald's Historically, the processes that have caused the iterative we are immediately inscribed into the collective which, metamorphosis of Casablanca's identity have come from the characterized by its value consciousness and its "being on the outside of the city. Yet, Casablanca has somehow always run," constitutes the McDonald's crowd. What is deceiving already been a part of them - an aspect that has made the about architecture is that it constantly tries to reify its city's transformations seem to occur rather seamlessly. position as art, as the work of a single mind or effort. Thus, Surprisingly enough, the last of such shifts in the imaginary in an attempt to move architecture away from the realm of identity of Casablanca (i.e. the film's contribution) has not the mass produced, to veil its position as a commodity, the yet been fully incorporated into the real city. Only a squalid designer is put forth as the sole productive subject, and we aspect of it has filtered into the air conditioned entrails of are asked to identify with hidher. The buildings produced Casablanca's Hyatt Hotel, where the piano bar is called with this intention are now being referred to as "signature "Rick's Place." The film, however, has permeated the buildings" -the very term assigns a power to script as an consciousness of Casablancans to the extent that it is now agent of value that I have taken up and discussed in relation impossible to describe the city without referencing the to Casablanca elsewhere -in a speculative attempt to add motion picture. For instance, when Ossman writes about the value to the structure. This operation is aimed at diverting transitional nature of Casablanca's population, she is com- attention from architecture so that its true ability to produce pelled to describe it in terms of the film. For Ossman the city collective and individual subjectivities will remain unat- is a locus that collects the dreams and aspirations of its tended and at the expense of institutions whose power over citizens, it is an "end or waypoint of narrative, not its origin. buildings goes far beyond that of the individual designer. ... If we think of the experience of Casablanca ..., we see it This was the case with the Agence Prost, the institution as a nonplace, a passageway ... Just as the film Casablanca, founded in Casablanca by Henri Prost to legislate all building shot in California, offers an illusion of Casablanca, so too in Morocco. At the Agence, architects operating under the does the city itself seem to be made of dreams and prefab- delusion that they were the single productive entities in the ricated houses; it is impossible to link it to a time before building process, did nothing but carry out the manipulative movies, imported from else~here."~The notion of passage 84TH ACSA ANNUAL MEETING OPEN SESSIONS 1996 487 and temporal detainment is one of the central, reoccurring sixteenth century: through the visual cue of a Moorish tower. themes of the movie. When Ilsa goes to see Rick at his cafe Leaning over its upper edge, a muezzin calls the city to to explain why she disappeared in Paris, she does so by telling prayer with the Word of the Lord. A downward pan shot a story - her story. The narrative begins outside of follows the vertical length of the minaret, sign of traditional Casablanca, as all stories belonging to the city, then is oral communication, into the native street and we begin to suspended when it enters the city. "Has it got a wow finish?" hear a cacophony of indiscernible sounds. The word "mina- asks Rick, "I don't know the finish yet," answers Ilsa. "Well, ret" comes from the "manar" or "minar" signifying go on, tell it. Maybe one will come to you as you go along," lighthouse. We are thus not surprised to see thar the visual shgsRick. Going to Casablanca means anticipating leav- importance given to the minaret in Casablanca's first scene, ing Ca~ablanca;~to arrive in the city is to await an uncertain is replaced by the dominance of a lighthouse for the remain- unfolding. And so, let us enter Casablanca through the ing length of the feature - a tower which guides the planes cinematic realm: out of the city towards freedom. We enter the city only to A long shot of a revolving globe. As it revolves. Lines of leave it, and we do so, historically, through the conflation of fleeing refugees are superimposed over it. Over this scene vision with the tower. The minaret embodies the direct comes the voice of the narrator. opening of Casablanca to the world of communication and visual exchanges; it manifests the complex twofold move- Narrator: ment of entering and leaving without actually performing With the coming of the second World War, many eyes either, it is the gate to a real cyber space. in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully or desperately This abstract yet physical location where the eye meets to the freedom of the Americas. Lisbon became the architecture is, if I may suggest, the most fortunate locus great embarcation point. But not everybody could get from which to begin a building campaign in the expanded to Lisbon directly. And so a tortuous, roundabout field ofcasablanca. Casablanca can open up our profession's refugee trail sprang up. understanding of its role within the advancing realm of An animated map illustrates the trail as the narrator mentions virtual space. The city (and it should by now be clear that I the points. am not just referring to the physical space on the Western shore of Morocco) provides a historic urban paradigm in Narrator: which the collective imaginary, the real, theory, and practice Paris to ... Across the Mediterranean to exist as a consolidated undivisible block where virtual space ... Then by train or Auto or foot across the rim of is not a mere representation of real space but an interdepen- Africa to Casablanca in French Morocco. Here the dent part of it. To build in Casablanca is to open architecture fortunate ones through money or influence or luck, to an expanded set of constructive possibilities, where might obtain exit visas and scurry to Lisbon. And from traditional conceptions of site, genius loci, space, structure, Lisbon to the new world. But the others wait in and the social role of the design professional may be re- Casablanca, and wait, and wait, and wait ...I0 thought and evolve while giving architects a design foothold The camera's eye (a monocular surrogate of our own on the self proclaimed forward movement of the global vision) arrives to the city as did the Portuguese sailors in the village's cybernetic urbanity.

NOTES ' A number of service-oriented locals that simulate Casablanca to one degree or another have mushroomed up in cities like these since the opening of the movie. The one in Philadelphia for instance, is an exact replica of the movie set used for "Rick's Cafe Americain." Further, should you want to smoke Casablanca, proceed to your local tobacco store and ask for it. It is a mild Virginia-Burley blend of rolling tobacco manufactured by Alois Poschl GmbH & Co. in Landshut, Germany. Should you want to eat it, allow me to recommend The Casablanca Cookbook: WitzingandDinitzgatRick's (New York : Abbeville Press, c1992), written by Sarah Key. Koch, Howard, Casablanca: Script and Legend, (Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1973) p. 17. What occurred in Casablanca was, in my view, an intensifi- cation of the social processes which, as a result of European industrialization and the mass production of commodities, had begun to dismantle theories that placed subjects as the sole agents producing meaning and signification, and to introduce the notion that subjectivities are made available through social transactions and the subject's relation to the Figure 5. Opening shot to Warner Brother's Casablanca. object world surrounding it. These processes have been 488 84THACSA ANNUAL MEETING OPEN SESSIONS 1996 discussed in detail by theorists like: Theodor Adorno in cal materialism and continued by many other theorists thereaf- "Subject and Object, " The Essential Frankfurt SchoolReader, ter. For example, Michel Foucault saw the subject as being ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Con- displaced into history and genealogies of power: Jacques tinuum, 1982)); Althusser in "ideology and ideological State Derrida displaces subjectivity into language and textuality, Apparatuses,"; or K. Michael Hays in " and the Althusser into ideological practices, and Gilles Deleuze into Posthumanist Subject: The Architecture of Hannes Meyer advancing Capitalism. and Ludwig Hilbesimer," (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992), ' Adam, Andre, Histoire de Casablanca (des origines a 1914), to the latter of which this section is indebted. (Aix-En-Provence: Imprimerie Louis-Jean, 1969) pp. 67-68. The Clash (Strummer/Jones). Lost In The Supermarket, in "The Wssman, Susan, Picturing Casablanca, Portraits of Power in a Clash On Broadway" CD,( New York: Sony Music Entertain- Modern City (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and : University ment, 1991), CD 2, Track 14. of California Press, 1994) p. 27. Varnelis, Kazis, The Spectacle of the Innocent Eye: Vision, The same occurs when going to see Casablanca at a movie Cynical Reason, and the Discipline ofArchitecture in Post War theater. One goes to see the movie in anticipation of leaving the America. (Ithaca: Cornell University Doctoral Thesis, 1994), theater. p. 261. "' Koch, Howard, Casablanca: Script and Legend, (Woodstock: This discussion follows the lines drawn by Marx in his histori- Overlook Press, 1973) p. 3 1 .